


Reliable Narrators

by OctoberSpirit



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Anxious Carlos, Cecil Is Not Subtle, Cecil is Mostly Human, Consequences, Established Relationship, Gen, M/M, NVCR, Protective Carlos, Protective Cecil, Strexcorp, Tattooed Cecil, The Voice of Night Vale, Threats that become less vague, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, Vague Threats
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-01-17 16:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1394017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OctoberSpirit/pseuds/OctoberSpirit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>This notice acts as your final disciplinary warning. Further breach of approved conduct will result in more permanent consequences as outlined by section forty-one, subsection C of your contract.</em>
</p>
<p>In which StrexCorp is patient until it is not, and Cecil must make an important decision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**StrexCorp Synernists, Inc**  
 **To:** Cecil Palmer  
 **From:** Representative B-4879245  
 **Re:** Notice of Final Warning (Time Sensitive)

Dear Mr. Palmer,

Regarding your broadcast on Friday: Well done! As always, your professionalism and dedication to reporting under fire merged seamlessly with your ability to soothe and entertain your listeners. Night Vale is truly Blessed by a Smiling God™ to have daily access to your influential and informative vocal skills.

That said, this is a notice to cease and desist immediately.

Due to previously issued warnings, your most recent breach of approved content has resulted in a two-week paid suspension from Night Vale Community Radio, effective immediately. Please surrender your studio to your approved replacement and refrain from any unofficial broadcasts during your suspension period.

This notice acts as your final disciplinary warning. Further breach of approved conduct will result in more permanent consequences as outlined by section forty-one, subsection C of your contract (see attached).

Regards,  
Emily Alvarez-Quinde  
Assistant Director of Media Corrections

-

Carlos finds Cecil at the kitchen table, enshrouded in a kind of silence that renders all things surrounding him mute. The usual sounds of his apartment—air conditioning unit, gurgling coffeepot, that plant near the window that buzzes occasionally—have been seemingly absorbed by the vacuum of space, or the nearest equivalent where the Voice of Night Vale is involved. Carlos clears his throat, attempts to speak. Finds it necessitates far greater effort to produce even the faintest of results. Cecil’s name feels like a shout and sounds like a whisper, but is nonetheless effective in shifting Cecil’s gaze a fraction. “Carlos,” he allows, and the silence around them literally shatters.

Carlos dodges the worst of the debris and sets a mental reminder to gather some samples, then plops into the chair at Cecil’s left. 

“Hey,” he says, skimming Cecil’s elbow with his fingertips. Cecil’s hands are engaged in the steepling of his fingers, and his wrists in a delicate curve; Carlos works with what he has. Cecil’s tattoos warm to his touch but remain stationary, which is unusual. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine, my dear Carlos, from the optimist’s perspective. I find myself, at present, facing two weeks’ paid vacation, albeit presented as a disciplinary action by the company that currently heads our small town’s even smaller radio station.” His head dips very slightly, indicating the folded paper to his right; Carlos reaches with his unoccupied hand. 

“You were suspended?” Carlos flips the paper without thinking; the reverse is blank. A paperclip-shaped indentation is all that remains of the attached contract. “What consequences? How many of these do you have?”

Cecil’s lips pull toward a wry little smile. “Several,” he admits.

“For what? For doing your _job?”_

There’s a faint susurrus of fabric on fabric as Cecil shrugs, his fingertips lifting apart and tapping together again, a meeting of whorls and loops and arches. His index fingers settle against his lips. “There are details I am discouraged from incorporating into my broadcasts. Particularly my own speculations. I’ve been…not quite subtle enough for the particular tastes of StrexCorp Synernists, Inc.” A musing furrow appears between his eyebrows. “My reports on Tamika Flynn in particular resulted in four of my initial warnings.”

“Cecil,” says Carlos again, because its shape is familiar to his teeth and his tongue, because Cecil is staring mid-distance at nothing and speaking with detached, deliberate formality. Carlos takes Cecil’s hands between his own, pressing the palms together like they’re praying. “Cecil, look at me,” he says; with an effort, Cecil complies.

“Dear Carlos,” he murmurs. “I’m afraid you have found me lost in thought.” He still sounds like the voice of his gravest broadcasts, but the wordplay is encouraging, and his pupils have constricted appropriately to the level of light in the room. Carlos breathes an unsteady sigh belied by the sturdiness of his hands. He’s not used to this Cecil, not in proximity. This Cecil reminds him of miles-off thunder, of distant galaxies, of neon in the dark. His surface solidity implies a fracture, like the brightly-colored layers of a cast. Carlos holds all the tighter, as though the physicality of his grip might anchor Cecil to their kitchen.

“Will you tell me?”

“Of course.”

Carlos studies Cecil’s face, lifts their hands to kiss Cecil’s knuckles. As Cecil starts to come back to himself, Carlos discovers a storm in his expression, indecision layered like ink beneath his skin. Apprehension trips down Carlos’ vertebrae. “Have you eaten today? We could talk at the Moonlite. It might be beneficial to the productivity of the discussion.” It’s not as central as Big Rico’s, fairly private as far as privacy goes in Night Vale, and Carlos is itching to get Cecil outside. He looks as though he’s been sitting here for hours, and he smells strongly of coffee, which indicates his neglect of proper nutritional intake. “Would that be all right?”

Cecil closes his eyes for a very long moment, light refracting through his lenses to map his eyelids like stained glass. Carlos wonders over them. Wonders over Cecil. Wonders over the way Cecil takes back his hands, retracting them from Carlos’ grip as though they are fragile, breakable as the silence.

“The Moonlite All-Nite Diner,” says Cecil. He pushes back the chair and stands. “That sounds fine, my dearest Carlos.”

“Great,” says Carlos. “Two minutes. Let me change.”

-

“What is the point, lovely Carlos,” says Cecil, like a statement, like certainty dragging its edges through dust. “What is the point of the Voice of Night Vale if the Voice of Night Vale does not _speak_ for Night Vale?”

Carlos shuts his eyes, condensation trickling down his fingers as he clutches his water glass, knuckles white. The beginnings of a headache burrow against his temples. When he looks again, Cecil has retreated, hunched over his coffee, hands curved around the mug. Uncertainty is sketched like shadows beneath his eyes. Their waitress shuffles out from behind the jukebox, collects their order from the kitchen window, and carefully deposits it at their booth before slinking back into her hiding space. Cecil stirs a vortex into his coffee. “It wasn’t meant to be rhetorical.”

Carlos takes up his fork and begins to cut his pancakes into pieces, arranging them by shape as he marshals his thoughts. It’s too much, and that’s all he can think; the sacrifice is too great, too real, too permanent. A permanent solution to a temporary problem. Sheer reflex shakes his labcoat sleeves over his wrists, but that’s an old wound, and this one is fresh. He cannot fathom the legality involved—but there, he’s thinking like an outsider again. This is Night Vale. Legality is fickle.

“What are you thinking?” Cecil asks. His voice is soft and ocean-floor deep. “I’ve spent the day alone with my thoughts. I’d kind of like to hear someone else’s.”

“You can’t,” blurts Carlos. “Cecil, it won’t—” He cuts himself off. Returns to the question. One step at a time, approach it like academia. They both need to see all sides of the problem, and he needs to counter with facts, not emotion. Carlos the Scientist picks up the thread. “How will you be able to speak for Night Vale if you don’t have the literal ability to speak?”

“I will speak for as long as I can continue. That is my responsibility.” Cecil abandons the warmth of his coffee mug and stretches an arm across the table, his hand like an offering. Carlos takes it. “I can’t lie for them. I can’t do the show that way. There has to be something between the lines. There are things I will not sacrifice, Carlos, not in clear conscience. This is not Desert Bluffs.”

“This has only just started. Night Vale’s going to need your show. Tamika’s militia still has limits, and the rest of the town… You coordinate people, you get them to think. They need you, scientifically speaking. You’re a necessary element. You’re the Voice for a reason.”

“And if I don’t uphold that reason, what happens? Either way, the consequences will resonate. My silence is going to speak, Carlos, and it has to say something worth itself.”

“But _you_ won’t say anything, ever again.”

“But at least my voice will still be mine.” Cecil squeezes his hand, perhaps harder than he intends. Carlos reads in it the severity of their situation. The facts begin to bleed, just a little.

“Cecil,” says Carlos, “there are other ways to broadcast. Just take the suspension, and I’ll take some time off, and we’ll figure it out, but together, okay? You don’t have to walk into it just to make a point. This is dangerous, Cecil, and we, I, we _need_ you.”

“This is—”

_“I_ need you.”

Cecil’s eyes widen as though he’s surprised, though he shouldn’t be, not by something like this. Carlos has spoken these words before, has forced his voice through this aching, desperate pitch; it’s the context that’s new, the seriousness of the encounter. But Cecil should be used to shifts in gravity, given the relationship of gravity to Night Vale. Cecil should know that the intensity of an emotion is not diminished by the time it takes to build.

When Cecil regains command of himself, there’s a rasp in his voice that is not often audible. “I am trying to be what you need,” he says. “Because you are very important, Carlos.”

Carlos tries for a smile. “Scientifically speaking?”

“For personal reasons,” Cecil corrects. 

The waitresses scatter as the jukebox disappears.

-

“Carlos,” says Cecil, reaching in the dark. Carlos fumbles blindly for a moment, his hands recalling Cecil’s shape, seeking it out, pulling it close. Cecil’s lips move in a whisper against his clavicle. “Carlos,” he says again, “my imperfect, lovely Carlos.” His fingers flutter, touching skin, touching scars.

“Cecil.” Carlos shivers and speaks against his hair. “Please promise you won’t do something stupid. Promise you won’t let them hurt you to make a point. Let me help; I can help. Just promise, I can help.” His arms pull tight around Cecil’s shoulders, their bodies so close that he can feel Cecil’s tattoos. They remind him of static against his chest, of the faint, buzzing warmth of a plasma sphere. Carlos cannot fathom Night Vale without them, cannot imagine another voice on the radio. “Please,” he insists. “Promise me, Cecil.”

Cecil’s whole body hesitates. Carlos holds all the tighter.

“You and me,” says Carlos, “we can figure it out. I can help. I’m a scientist. You’re Cecil. You’re amazing. Just don’t, please don’t, I can’t begin to explain—”

“Carlos,” soothes Cecil, full radio-timbre. 

“Cecil,” says Carlos, refusing to be soothed. 

Silence flits between them, slipping like water through nonexistent spaces. From the corner, something breathes. It might be the moonlight. It might be something entirely different. It might be their lungs, held separate and solitary, a rift in their dimensional expectations.

The moonlight does not need to breathe.

“Okay,” says Cecil. The sound is soft. Soft in the manner of dead, distant stars, burning in silence an eternity away. Soft like mizzling rain in the desert. Cecil sighs. “I promise.”

Carlos tries to believe.


	2. Chapter 2

_Hello, Night Vale!_

_Gosh, it’s so very nice to finally meet you all. Just a quick introduction, before we get to the rest of the show: I’m Kevin, and I’ll be filling in for Cecil for a couple of weeks! I know at least one of you knows me already—hey there, Steve Carlsberg!—but for those who don’t, I host a radio show just like this one over at Desert Bluffs Community Radio. Just like this one! It already feels like we’re one big, happy family, huh?_

_Now, I know I’m not your usual host, but I’ll do my best to bring you the kind of high-quality radio you’re used to hearing. After all, you deserve it! And everyone should get what they deserve._

_Everyone. Don’t you think?_

_Now, then! Let’s get things underway with a look at local sports…_

-

Carlos swats the air at the side of the bed, hoping to catch something vital to the continuing function of the clock-radio. He has no idea what time it is—the sun is up, which means nothing here—but his body insists on further sleep, and his brain is disinclined to protest. He was up with Cecil most of the night, just talking and touching, reassuring them both.

 _Cecil._ His brain sparks and stirs. There’s a Voice on the radio, pitched high and upbeat.

Carlos opens his eyes. 

Cecil is awake.

He’s sitting back against the headboard, knees pulled nearly to his chest, arms in a loose circle around them. His tattoos are almost manic this morning. Carlos watches them, cataloguing their strange, mind-bending movements, the jittery static of ink beneath skin. Cecil doesn’t appear to notice, his attention caught up in the empty air that drifts between their bed and the wall.

“Cecil,” says Carlos, soft and cautious. Cecil’s lips twitch. His gaze does not focus.

Carlos props himself up and closes the inches of space between them, winding an arm around Cecil’s back. Every muscle is tensed beneath his desert-warm skin, twitching with the occasional tremor, but he is solid and present and Carlos can handle it. Gently, he reaches to turn off the radio.

“Don’t,” says Cecil. He speaks in a strange variation of his Voice, one that Carlos has not previously heard, one that impedes his ability to breathe. Air catches on the inhale, sticks in his throat; Cecil’s voice, his Voice, is flat and commanding, deep-chilled like old stones at the bottom of a well. Carlos is seized by the sudden, vital necessity of getting his boyfriend to meet his eyes. The clock-radio continues to burble like soda, like the sick-sweet, cancerous flavor of aspartame. 

“Fine,” breathes Carlos, “but hey, look at me.”

Cecil doesn’t respond, doesn’t even indicate that he’s heard, but his tattoos shift almost imperceptibly, so Carlos waits, pressed tight to his side. Traffic bleeds into the community calendar, which gives way in turn to local news, to a word from the sponsors, to the opening notes of the morning’s weather.

Cecil, suddenly, barely in motion—Cecil turns his head just enough.

“Carlos,” he breathes, “dear, lovely Carlos. I’m not entirely sure I can do this.”

“Cecil, we discussed—”

“I know. I recall.” 

The weather drifts in soothing spirals, the faintest hint of discord running through. Cecil’s eyes hold something unfamiliar; his third eye stares like it’s trying to incinerate something only he can see. There is every chance this hypothesis holds true.

The new Voice—Kevin—returns to the airwaves.

“I’m trying,” says Cecil, “I am fighting against every instinct I possess, against every nerve and muscle and bone. The timing is horrifically crucial, Carlos. I shouldn’t just sit here, not with Parade Day…” He trails off, frowning, his tattoos jerking. “The timing,” says Cecil, his eyes glazing over.

Carlos strengthens the press of his arms around Cecil, tries to fight down a spike of raw panic. The way Cecil speaks portends his intentions; his vocabulary shifts to coincide with his moods. Carlos can read his speech like a mood ring, like liquid swirls of thermochromic crystal. “It’s not worth it,” he murmurs. “We need you. You’re needed.”

“I know,” Cecil says, and its color is alarming.

-

All week, the days trembling through temporal uncertainty, it is a strange version of Cecil with whom Carlos lives.

Carlos makes a habit of leaving late for work, lingering over breakfast, fidgeting with his labcoat. Cecil’s sleep-cycle has undergone a radical shift; he is often awake long before the alarm, and he’s taken to pacing their bedroom at midnight. His already-worrisome caffeine intake doubles, resulting in jitters that mar bloodstone placement and ruffle patches of Khoshekh’s fur. It is almost physically painful to leave him, despite the unusual number of Secret Police who have taken to lingering outside their apartment. After this week, he has scheduled time off.

Still, Cecil’s real and alive and thankfully present every night when Carlos returns from the lab, regardless of the edge in his voice and the constant background noise of the radio. Carlos orders Big Rico’s and Cecil mutters to himself, to the Faceless Old Woman, to their potted plants. The Faceless Old Woman taps Morse code in response.

Khoshekh rubs his face against Carlos’ leg and purrs like something straight from the Hellmouth.

-

“Carlos,” says Cecil, his eyes on the ceiling. “Dearest Carlos, you know that I love you, right?”

Carlos, who is not—after all—an idiot, shoots Cecil look of transparent alarm. “Cecil, I swear to god, don’t you dare.”

“I’m just—”

_“Cecil.”_

“I’m just asking, Carlos.”

They stare at each other across the coffee table, a Bradbury novel splayed across Cecil’s thigh, Carlos’ iPhone buzzing with an incoming message. Behind Cecil’s eyes swims something decisive. Before Carlos can read it, Cecil glances away.

Carlos breathes out a mixture of fondness and fear. “Of course I know.” He stands and joins his boyfriend on the sofa, nudging his hand til their fingers twine. Cecil allows the faint twist of a smile. “The entire town knows, you incredible dork.”

“As long as you know, that’s all right, my Carlos.”

“Well, I love you, too. I hope you know that.” 

Cecil hums a low-pitched sound of affirmation, brushing his thumb over Carlos’ palm, smoothing the places where small scars have healed. Carlos rests his head against Cecil’s shoulder, inhaling his inexplicable sage-butterscotch scent. “Promise,” he says, soft and surprising. “Promise you’re not going to do something dangerous.”

“We’ve already had this discussion, dear Carlos.”

“Cecil.” Carlos frowns into the fabric of Cecil’s sleeve. He wishes he had Cecil’s talent for words. “I know you underestimate yourself. I know you’re prone to existential crisis. I know you sometimes use dishonesty as a medium. But you’re real, Cecil, you’re so, so important, and not just to the town, but to me, because you’re _you._ I can’t… Just promise me, Cecil, promise me again. And then promise you’re not going to go do it anyway.”

“Carlos,” says Cecil, but nothing else. His silence hangs in the air like a sunset.

A headache pulses. _The Voice of Night Vale._

-

Carlos’ blood runs cold as the broadcast cuts.

He drops something—something expensive, he thinks; he’s not sure—but he can’t manage to move, can’t even focus his eyes, although he feels his colleagues’ stares boring into his head. 

“Carlos,” says someone, “you need to go.”

He doesn’t react, or he doesn’t think he does—Cecil was not supposed to be on the air today. His suspension cut neatly into Tamika’s rally, cut neatly into their unspoken, coded plans. But then his voice, crackling over the airwaves, his deep, deeply confident radio Voice, devil-may-care and illogically infectious until Carlos started to let his guard slip—

And now, now this. Now radio silence beating down on the desert. Now Carlos completely frozen beneath it, echoes of Cecil’s last milliseconds of sound bouncing between his ears like a bullet. Somewhere distant, a rhythmic humming of helicopters. They drone across the sky like a pestilent swarm. 

_“Carlos,”_ says the someone, insistent now, a hand on his arm to accompany the voice. Carlos blinks a slow blink and tries to focus. His pupils contract. “You need to _go.”_

The air is buffered and beaten by sound, by the mindless rotation of blind machine parts. Carlos lifts his eyes to the sun and reacts.

His fellow scientists do not watch him flee.

-

_Cecil, Cecil, Cecil, Cecil._ The name shapes itself each time Carlos breathes.

Carlos is on the move again, somewhere deep in the Whispering Forest. All things considered, he sort of wishes he’d prepared a better contingency plan, but beggars can’t be choosers and his chances are better in here than in the desert. With no car and supplies limited to the contents of his backpack—three bagged lunches, an assortment of homemade scientific devices, and the disassembled skeleton of his banged-up phone—it’s difficult to hypothesize what would have caught up with him first: the StrexCorp search team or the elements. Either way, his odds of survival seemed slim. The Whispering Forest was the best he could do.

“Carlos?” says a tree, high-pitched and hopeful. He deliberately angles away and keeps moving.

He does not think they’ll look for him here, at least not right away, and not with efficiency. Strex does not know how to handle the Forest. They’ll sooner waste resources scouring the desert, saturating the airwaves with promises and fear. But no one knows where Carlos has gone, and the desert itself is a vast dead-end. At the least, he has time. 

But does Cecil?

He breathes.

Carlos has been moving every few hours, the time frame randomized by his uncertain wristwatch. He alternates napping and tinkering with his phone, attempting to start the radio app without triggering the Strex-mandated GPS function. It’s risky, he knows, and incredibly foolish, but the gnawing urgency of unanswered questions urges his fingers against the phone’s innards. His lips shape the name with each shaken exhale.

_Cecil, Cecil._

The foliage hums.

When Carlos finally catches the signal, he merely encounters persisting dead air, like a ghost of that last, unspoken _goodnight,_ like the sound of the Voice of Night Vale, silenced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic and I are just not getting along. See, this is why I don't write chapter fics. We get into fights. And if you weren't aware, fanfiction fights dirty.
> 
> I've been fcking with this chapter for months, and I refuse to let another episode of WTNV come out before I get it online, because frankly this is getting ridiculous, so...
> 
> The fic's not finished; it won this round. Next chapter, I'll beat it into submission. 
> 
> In the meantime, I'll be tumbling at octoberspirit.tumblr.com. You're invited. :3

**Author's Note:**

> I would truly love to write something witty and relevant here, but I am currently sick and a little disoriented. It has taken me hours just to come up with tags and format the html. I'm not even entirely sure that the fic itself is coherent. In fact, I'm not entirely sure that I'm typing in the notes-box. It's an adventure~
> 
> I think this is gonna be a two-chapter, but it could end up three. Adventuuure.
> 
> I'm going back to tumblr. Tumblr is a lot easier to navigate right now. octoberspirit.tumblr.com is me. Nyan.


End file.
